


Koi No Yokan

by yeoltidecarol



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 12:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16853959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeoltidecarol/pseuds/yeoltidecarol
Summary: For as long as you’ve known Junmyeon, you’ve known you would eventually fall in love with him. One night, when he takes you to a psychic, you learn that he believed he would love you, too.





	Koi No Yokan

The fog descended upon the earth early in the evening, just past sunset when the sky still glimmered with embers of light, bringing with it a weight that makes your chest feel tight with ardent craving. A grey lingers beyond the car window, warmth leaving smudges on the glass as it meets the coolness of the interior. Occasionally, you press your fingers against it, pretend you are leaving marks on a world that does not feel you, but your skin kisses just the same.

At twenty-five, Junmyeon makes the length of your town feel limitless, edgeless, swallowed whole by a night thick with wonder. There’s magic in the air when the world is like this, at least that’s what he says, though sometimes you think the magic is him. It’s his lopsided smile and his eyebrows, too expressive for a boy and too wild for a man, that makes the world feel impossible and beautiful, all at the same time.

The psychic at the end of the pier was his idea, something he tossed casually into the air with a laugh lurking behind his tongue. Part of you is unsure if he takes it seriously, if he’s teasing or playing, but you know he means it. You know that’s the route of the evening, know that once he’s suggested something he sticks to it, steadfast and confident, and so unlike you.

‘Besides,’ he said, glancing at you sidelong and with wildfire in his eyes, ‘we don’t want to lose the twilight.’

He drives with one hand on the wheel, looking everywhere and making you smolder with his seeming indifference; drives like he means to leave neon smears behind him, turning every sign and every billboard to ash. Like this, he seems to move time, guides it with his foot and his hand, the car a conduit for the life you are meant to live. Outside, the fog makes the streetlights glow, becoming little else than orbs of purpose and potential, and you long stopped trying to focus on them as they pass. Now, you just accept the lights for what they are: phantasms of hope and whim.

Instead, you keep your attention on him, the only solid thing you can see. Out of the dark he looms, outlined by the hazy rays of the moon and radiating from within. The closeness in the car makes the air you breathe feel thick, as though you could suck the nectar from the atmosphere and let it warm you down to your bones. In your chest, the wanting burns, makes your blood liquid ore as it courses through your veins, but the inherent weakness of you means you will not turn away.

It’s always been there, you know, the feeling that you could or would love him. The way he spoke, the way he moved, the way he urged you to surrender to disorganization and happenstance; it is not that you did love him, only that it was inevitable that you would. It is not that he wore you down, because you felt you were his long before you had met.

Usually, you are good at studying him impassively, good at stealing pieces of him away to build your memories around him, painting him in only the best colours. Tonight, your gaze breaks him down, reducing and minimizing him to down to his atoms, gluttonous in its desire to learn him. Beneath your inquisitive stare, he does not move, does not shudder, his stillness making your palms begin to sweat with yearning.

You aren’t sure why you watch him so intently, why the line of his hand to his wrist to his arm to his shoulder seems perfect and hypnotizing, but you find it impossible to tear your eyes away. Can’t, don’t want to, and won’t, all phrases you chew inside your mouth as you watch him focus and watch him grin, seeing something in the world you do not.

‘I can feel you watching me,’ he says, nonchalant and as though he almost expects your eyes on him, always.

‘And?’

There’s a challenging edge to your voice, one that makes it feel like the sharp point of a knife. It’s harsher than you mean to be, but you know he likes it when you’re firm and difficult to handle; you know he likes it when he gets to soften you with his own hands.

‘It feels good,’ he says slowly, mouth shaping the words and kissing them free. ‘Like you’re all over my skin.’

The thickness in his voice makes your thighs clench and your breath hitch, fingers wrapping tightly around the leather of the seat. All these years and still he catches you off guard with his intensity, sudden and seductive as though he is birthing stars with a flick of his tongue. All these years and, still, you let him.

‘What the fuck, Jun,’ you chuckle, steadying your breath and inhaling deeply to take the sound of his voice into your blood.

Turning to wink at you, he licks his lips before he speaks. ‘It’s the truth.’

Coming from his mouth, it sounds easy, flirting, teasing, though you do not know which he means. It goes both ways, toes the dangerous line between playing and wanting, and somehow both taste the same on an unsure tongue. Just the same, your voice withers back into your chest, locks itself away and gently caresses his implication. 

Junmyeon parks the car on the side of the road, by the old motel highway sign, it’s arrow now rendered directionless. The motel is gone now, destroyed somewhen long before you were born, but the sign remains, a beacon from a past more distant now because no one chooses to remember it. Unremarkable, uneventful, faded and lost, remembered only by a photograph and words boasting colour television and a swimming pool. A lonely headstone, you think, but one that burns brightly just the same.

The fluorescent sign hanging along its edge captivates your attention, makes the faded colours blossom into something fresh and new, pulling you back in time.

‘My grandparents met at that motel,’ Junmyeon announces as he follows your line of sight. He leans against the open car door, folds his arms and pauses as though waiting for the sign to reveal some secret. Like this, he appears detached, as though he too were merely a fragment of memory. ‘They said the sheets were itchy.’

A laugh brims over your lips, escapes into the atmosphere even though it feels unwarranted. Truthfully, you’re awed, bewildered by his ability to humanize the majesty of relics. Still, true to form, he lets the magic remain.

‘I suppose it didn’t matter in the end, did it?’ he posits before turning to look at you.

Your tongue greets him with a reticent silence, one in which you struggle to catch his train of thought, but it does not phase him, doesn’t even seem to register in his mind.

Junmyeon keeps his serene smile as he shrugs and regards you with a fondness you cannot place. ‘They got married, didn’t they?’

The concept of it is delightful to him, the prospect of the unknown and unexpected something exciting and profound. In his voice, he carries all the unasked questions: did they know they would fall in love? Was it love at first sight? Could they feel it in their fingertips, a future longing all the way down to their toes, as they walked side by side to gather ice?

He slips out of the car the same way he slips away from these questions, lets them hang in the air for your fingers to fondle without grasping for purchase.

You say nothing as you get out, shivering only because it feels like something that must be done in the eerie silence that hangs around you. This far out, the homes are distant, separated by yards and yards of grassy fields and torn up parking lots. This is the land of the desperate and the dying, at least that’s what you’ve always called it, but Junmyeon doesn’t see it that way.

Miracles happen when you’re desperate, he says, because at that point you have no choice but to believe.

Together, you walk down the block towards a worn down strip mall. Idly, you count the rungs of every fence you pass, some recently painted and others worn down to the wood. Victorian homes, clinging to their former grace, line the block, looking austere and regal and unloved as they wrap themselves in the night. Some windows flicker with the motion and glare of television screens, making them appear haunted and menacing.

‘Why didn’t we park closer?’ you ask, hugging you sweater around you as a chill overtakes your shoulders.

‘I like the walk.’ Junmyeon closes his eyes and lets his head fall back, reclining and luxuriating in the atmosphere as though the fog could hold him. ‘And,’ he continues, ‘it’s a beautiful night.’

Humming, you nod and study your feet as you walk. ‘What made you want to see a psychic?’

At this, he chuckles, though not at you and neither at your question. The depth of his laugh, the flush at his cheeks, you sense he is laughing at himself, at his impulses and his ability to be taken by caprice.

‘Something to do, I guess,’ he says, though you know it’s not what he means to say. Tugging his bottom lip between his teeth, he mulls over his words before nodding at nothing and no one. ‘It’s something special to share with you.’

Butterflies bloom in your stomach, struggling to break free at his words. He was close, you think, to implying that you were what is special about this evening, that the something is only important because it belongs to you as much as it belongs to him. You want to believe that he sees you as you see him, that he too feels the tether that has started to grow from the center of your chest, pulling you to him and hoping he never departs.

‘I’m glad you picked me,’ you try, hoping that your voice does not sound meek or mild, and praying that he does hear the longing that taints your cadence.

Running a hand through his hair, he smiles at you, sheepish. ‘I’m glad you said yes.’

When he turns to look at you, you see the honesty and sincerity that pulls his lips into a smile. Part of you struggles to imagine him sharing this evening with anyone else, knowing that you are his balance, that you smooth his edges when he needs it most. He’s said it as much, said that he feels you on him even when you are not there, reminding him to keep still and keep calm when the world around him becomes cacophonous.

Always, Junmyeon presses at the world, pulls at the strands of conformity and tries to unmake it all with delicate scratches of his nails. Always, he relies on you to keep him together, and, always, you rely on him to make the world taste sweet. Where you like order, Junmyeon likes chaos, and somewhere in between you exist together, needy and lonely and craving only each other’s company when the noise of existence becomes too much to bear.

Silence grows between you, comfortable and not altogether unwelcome. The hand at your side aches and itches to lace your fingers between his, to hold him and claim him as your own, but you keep your arm still. You’re sure it looks awkward and out of place, odd that the motionless limb hangs limp beside you, but your skin feels like a livewire. From time to time it twitches, anxious and needy in its desire to feel the length of Junmyeon’s palm clutched against it.

As you get closer to the pier, the smell in the air changes to a light sea breeze. With it, it carries the scent of low tide and the subtle odor of dead fish and decaying sand. With each inhale, your nose burns with the scent, makes your nose scrunch in offense though Junmyeon remains stoic and unaffected. Briefly, you wonder how often he’s done this walk, how often and with whom. He walks the length of the uneven sidewalk with ease and confidence, sure steps he does not second guess as he looks everywhere but the direction of your destination.

‘My dad used to take my mother here when they were teenagers.’

His voice penetrates the air, cuts straight through to your heart and makes your fingers clench at your side, regardless of the offhanded nature of his comment. Once more, his voice is distant and wandering, but this time he means to take you with him.

‘They’d park just beyond the pier entrance,’ he continues, gesturing over to a parking lot that is crumbling away with time, ‘and count quarters, see how many tokens they’d buy at the arcade. Back then, quarters were worth a lot and they’d spend hours here just playing games together.’

‘Is this where they fell in love?’

‘Maybe,’ he sing-songs with a shrug. ‘Who knows where or how anyone falls in love.’

Something about this statement feels off, wrong to you in some way. ‘Lots of people do,’ you challenge. ‘My dad met my mother because he held the door for her. He said it was love at first sight.’

Junmyeon hums for a moment, considering your words seriously. ‘Was it for her?’

‘I think so,’ you begin, ‘though I think she had a delayed realization.’

‘See, I think for most people love just happens.’ He keeps his gaze straight ahead as he speaks, as though seeing the manifestation of a love you cannot even fathom, as though he can see love itself in the distant tide. ‘You can’t really plan it and you don’t really think about it. Think of the inverse. One day love is there and another it isn’t. It’s the same for falling in love. One day it’s a distant thing and another you can’t imagine it never being there at all.’

‘You mean it settles over you?’

Junmyeon nods, brow furrowed in agreement. ‘Quietly, and most times without your permission.’

Uncertain how to respond, you choose instead to remain quiet, mulling over his words with an eager tongue and teeth. Again, he speaks to the way you feel as though he knows it, as though the experience is his as much as it is yours. This is not the first time he has spoken as though he knows your soul, as though he knows and has felt your secret, touched it in the night and learned it for himself.

But all at once, his demeanor changes, the lines on his face, brought forward from his concentration, are wiped away all at once by his jovial smile.

‘There it is!’ he exclaims, pointing at a building that stands out in the distant simply because it is neon and it glows.

Even from a distance, you can feel the slight way the weight of the world shifts as you approach. Something about the building feels important, something about the way the waves break on the shore feels symphonic, something about the way he breathes feels majestic. Every step leads you closer to a destiny or a curse, you aren’t entirely sure which, and by the time you reach the door your heart has decided it is neither.

Whatever lies beyond this door, you think, will reveal a truth. Nothing more and nothing less, just something that exists in the dark, unkissed spaces of existence. Something that lingers just beyond your reach, waiting for you to see it, to want it, and to pull it closer through the strength of will.

For a long while, he pauses beside the window and lets the green overtake the expanse of his skin. With his hands stuffed into the pockets of his bomber jacket, he looks ethereal, as though he’s ascending a different dawn. The green of the neon consumes him, but it’s the purple letters that make his eyes find new depth, as though he sees beyond and between things you cannot fathom. In the glow, you consider him to be the first drop of a hurricane, the start of your own undoing, and you welcome him with a hungry mouth.

‘Do you ever think about how neon gets made?’ he asks abruptly, though he does not turn to look at you. Furrowing his brow, he cocks his head to the side and looks at the sign as though it is a puzzle; he looks at the sign the same way you look at him.

‘No.’ Saying it makes you sad, somehow, as though you have chosen to ignore the mysteries the world has offered you, palms up and eager for you to take. As though you have ignored the universe and let yourself wither beneath the lack. ‘Why?’

‘Dunno, no one ever really considers it. But I guess that’s the point.’ Pulling a hand from his pocket, Junmyeon presses his palm to the window, lining his hand up with the one traced in neon, and smiles at the odd, irregular fit. ‘It’s the moment when science meets magic, and explaining it takes the magic away.’

Considering his statement makes you feel as though you are trembling before greatness, given access to the wild and deep recesses of his mind. It does not go unnoticed that he touches palms with the sign, rather than touches the word ANSWERS, lingering just below in a brilliant shade of beryl. He avoids answers but you stare at the word LOVE as though you mean to dismantle it, break it down to angles and parts, and let it live beside the monument you’ve made of him.

‘Magic can still exist even if you understand it,’ you counter, hoping your voice sounds equally as wise. ‘Sometimes it makes things better.’

‘Not like this,’ he says, sounding proud and mystified. ‘Sometimes, we should let things glow just because they do. Sometimes, that should be enough.’

When Junmyeon gets like this you call him the Prophet. You aren’t sure why or when the name stuck, but it’s a name he wears with pride. Even when you first met him, he was terribly self-aware, aware of his mercurial moods and his long, wandering conversations that sometimes wrap around him in circles. You don’t mind these moods, find that, somewhere in the twine of his thoughts, he touches on things that matter, things that are important, and often on things you are too anxious to discuss.

When Junmyeon gets like this you feel yourself start to swoon, unapologetically, and always reach to pull him back so that you do not lose yourself to the wild land inside his heart.

‘You’re leaving prints on the glass,’ you try, hoping to pull him back to you, and you to yourself.

‘Don’t worry,’ he laughs, pulling his hand away regardless. ‘It’s not permanent.’

Sighing, you wish you could say the same for your soul. ‘What did you want to ask her?’

Turning towards you, Junmyeon regards you with a smile that breed affection into the corners of his lips. Stepping towards you, he leans into your ear and whispers, ‘I want her to tell me what I need.’

‘I don’t think she can do that,’ you laugh at his wild and grandiose statement. It’s loud though, almost too loud for the stillness of the evening, and you know it is because his breathe at your neck as made your skin come alive with sparks.

‘She can’t,’ he agrees, teasing you gently as he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. ‘But the universe can.’

And just like that, just as easily as breathing, he wins you over once more.

\---

When you push through the door, you find it is raining. The urgency with which you break free from the building makes your hands feel tense, your chest tight with too many things for you to process. Junmyeon follows suit, his laughter as he greets the rain musical and unrestrained. You wish you could feel as he, free and somehow liberated with the knowledge that the future is limitless.

Perhaps, in a way, you are, but already the tension between you has built, turning itself thick and sweet. Before, you were compressed, lungs restricted in their breaths as the pressed against your wanting, and now, you fear you might be drowning, capsizing in a yearning that consumes even the atoms of your skin.

Tipping your head back, you let the rain wash over you, let it cleanse away the disenchantment of your life until it pools at your feet. Around you, the world blurs, your vision warped and distorted by the drops that kiss your eyes and cheeks. It coats you, you think, rather than glides off you, covering you in a romantic deluge that refuses to be swept away.

‘The lovers,’ he says, the deep tenor of his voice striking you like lightening.

You turn to look at him, breath halting in your lungs as you take him in. He does not fight the rain or bask in it, not as you do, simply lets it cascade down his neck and shoulders. Junmyeon lets himself get drenched, lets his clothes stick to his skin as though the droplets making streams on his arms were always a part of him. In his hand, he clutches his jacket, holds it limply at his side and regards you with an unreadable expression.

‘I know,’ you say, sounding tired and weak, though you did not mean to. ‘I saw.’

Somehow, your answer does not please him, makes him clench his jaw and shake his head to move the hair from his eyes. As always, Junmyeon is asking more of you, demanding you give all of yourself to him, and now, given the card that lingered on the table before you, you don’t think he will ever stop. The single card invigorated him, made his words fall quickly as he asked who over and over.

You did not want to hear the answer. You don’t think you could have stomached not hearing your name.

‘Did you feel it though?’ he presses, taking a step forward.

With a deep inhale, he regards you, eyes becoming electric and alive as he watches the rise and fall of your chest. It’s the same for you, you know, gaze fixed on the way the muscles of his chest heave beneath his shirt.

‘Feel what?’ you sigh, shifting your weight from foot to foot. ‘It’s just a card, Jun.’

This, you know, is a lie. Yes, it is just a card, but, oh, did you feel it. Seeing the words printed before you, the colours and the shape of all the complex feelings your heart bleeds into every thought and action around him, you felt it. You felt them all, all at once and without any restraint. And, in the aftermath, the fear.

The fear of change, the fear of rejection, the fear of love, the fear of more and, paradoxically, so much less. You fear it all, and now, all at once and with no preparation, you have to handle it as though the very notion not break you. It is not that you fear loving him, or him loving you, it’s that you fear the loss.

Always, it was unavoidable that you would love Junmyeon. Always, you knew it would happen. Not once, however, was it certain you would get together and, if you did, that you could stay together.

And so you let your shoulders droop, once again letting reality eat away at the magic he so desperately wants to taste.

‘It’s just a card,’ you repeat, weak and lost and waiting for the evening to be over.

At your words, a dam breaks within him, urging him forward and straight to your body. He drops his coat in favor of cupping your face between his hands, thumbs running over your cheeks in soft caresses that make your skin start to ache. His eyes search yours for answers, seeking and looking for things in you he could not find within himself or from a psychic.

‘It’s not just a card,’ he murmurs, and even through the rain you feel the warmth of his breath on your face.

Your heart fights against your sternum, battling wildly to get to him, to sit next to his heart and feel the inevitable relief of union. With his hands on you, even the sound of your own doubt cannot drown the rhythm of your heartbeat. Awash with him as you are, it becomes clear there is no escape from this, from the need and the want. He looks at you as though you are a secret, an answer he finally gets to touch, but still you cannot believe that it is true.

He is everything, and you are you, and so you say the only truth your mouth can form.

‘You’re going to fall in love.’

You are not sure if you intended the words to hurt, but his brow furrows as though he has suddenly taken to bleeding inwardly. As if it to stop the pain, you reach a hand to his chest and let your fingers fist in his shirt, the water from the fabric overflowing between the tightness of your grip.

‘What if I already am?’ he groans, moving to close the distance between your bodies.

Bringing an arm around your waist, he pulls you too him, and you feel his warmth radiate through your clothes as though he is impervious to the chill of the air. Resting his forehead against yours, he takes a moment to simply breathe with you, a shudder interrupting the even rhythm as you wrap your arms around his neck.

‘In love?’ you murmur, voice small and tight.

‘Falling,’ he clarifies, lowering his head to run his nose along your cheek. ‘Falling.’

Like this, you feel all of him, feel the way his lips kiss the words free with a reverence you learn he reserves only for you. With his body pressed tightly against yours, you feel the way his heartbeat quickens as your fingers toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. Slowly, you arch back to regard him, tongue burning with a truth that makes your blood feel like fire. A small moan escapes his lips at the feeling of your chest moving against his, and his eyes instantly fall to the exposed length of your neck.

Bringing a hand to his face, you stroke idly at his cheek and wipe the away the hair that has stubbornly fallen back into his eyes. When his gaze falls back to yours, you feel his hand clench around your shirt and sweater, punching them up and exposing the skin of your lower back.

‘I’ll catch you,’ you say, the words sounding easy and frighteningly harmless, regardless of the weight they carry.

As though he cannot help himself, and taking your words as permission, Junmyeon lets his lips hover above yours for a moment, commiting the smell of you to memory, before he kisses at your lips. Gently, he sucks at your bottom lip, running his tongue along the skin before nudging your lips apart for access. The same way he kisses you, so too does his tongue glide along yours, careful, slow, and meaning to take all of you with purpose and precision.

In his warms, an unprecedented warmth consumes you, makes your body feel as though it is weightless. Protected, safe, unlimited - Junmyeon makes you feel all the things your life had been missing, a bravery taking shape within you simply because the boy with hurricane eyes has decided he will love you.

And it is then that you realize, as he worships you down to your body and soul, that the world was not missing magic. Rather, you needed Junmyeon to let you feel it - his hands on you turning you into a sorceress of unimaginable strength. Junmyeon makes you feel strong, makes you feel needed, breathes magic into your lungs and lets the glitter of the world settle over you like dust.

Junmyeon is the magic, you realize. And never again will you let yourself go without.


End file.
